


Lion's Teeth

by zenonaa



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 十神 - 佐藤友哉 | Dangan Ronpa: Togami - Satou Yuuya, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: F/M, Gen, togami/fukawa right at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 16:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18720781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/pseuds/zenonaa
Summary: 'You’re the youngest that has ever won, but don’t take it as a compliment. Just because you are a child, that doesn’t mean I will show you any leniency or kindness,” I warned him.Byakuya moved his rook to an adjacent square, but while mine had stepped toward him, his shifted once to the side, claiming none of my pieces. He looked up, stony-faced.“I wouldn’t want you to,” he said.'This document describes certain confidential events and is the property of Kijou Togami. It isn't to be opened even after his death, but a corpse can't stop you from reading it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> birthgami

...

I recall that I was in my Tokyo office because I remember a dark auburn bookcase unit with a unique design stood to my left, the one with the circular frame at the centre. Within the circle, several shelves had been fixed to form the shape of four staircases, and right in the middle of that was a compartment where one could sit a photograph, but I had not. 

Someone buzzed my intercom. When I raised my head, I could see the bookcase unit at the edge of my vision. An associate of mine, a renowned interior designer, gifted it to me years ago. 

“You have a visitor,” said my receptionist through a speaker.

“Let them in,” I instructed.

A few moments later - I didn’t count the number of seconds - the door ahead of me opened and Osamu Sugawara came in. He always looked like he just raked his fingers through recently washed hair.

I had no time for pleasantries. “What is it?”

Osamu grinned and swaggered over to my desk, holding a stack of papers. Once he had crossed the room, he set them down.

“These are the results for the first task,” Osamu said.

The first task had been assigned to all one hundred and eight competitors. Simply, they were given a certain amount of money and with it, they were to try to make as much of a profit as possible within the timeframe, which was six months. He watched my face as he pushed the papers toward me. I cast my eyes toward the list of names.

At the top was one that I didn’t recognise right away.

“Byakuya Polanski?” I read aloud. 

Basic facts were listed by his name, such as his date of birth and how much money he made. Reading them answered some of my queries but raised other questions.

I met Osamu’s gaze. “This one’s eleven?”

That would make him...

“... the youngest of them all,” said Osamu. He pointed to Byakuya’s name like I was some kind of idiot who hadn’t read it, but between us two, he was the idiot. 

Of course, he was a successful businessman but when compared to me and many of my near equals, Osamu was a total idiot, though he was smarter than the common filth that most of the population consisted of.

“Between him and the next competitor, there’s a wide margin, and this Masanori person in second place is in his forties,” I said. While Osamu was all smile, my face was as stiff as stone. “Is all this information correct?”

“You think they were mistyped, or mixed up?” asked Osamu, raising his eyebrows, and he almost looked serious. “No, no. It’s correct. I’ve met the boy several times. He’s really a remarkable child. Very stern though, just like his mother. Doesn’t trust anyone except his butler, and he doesn’t do friends either.”

I steepled my fingers and stared at Byakuya’s name, in thought. Osamu carried on talking. When I glanced up, he was waving a hand around animatedly.

“Plays the violin beautifully and can speak multiple languages,” he said, like a commoner father boasting about their son. “His mother must push him hard.”

He nattered on. I grimaced and lowered my gaze, keeping my face tight.

“Describe his mother to me,” I said without looking up.

“Eh?” Osamu paused. He settled down. “She’s called Anastazja. Her mother is Polish and her father is French and the managing director of Polanski Business Limited.”

This Anastazja woman must have been pushing Byakuya because while every woman chosen for me was born from the elite, overall, she was rather near the bottom of the barrel. There was also the fact that this Byakuya child was the youngest person competing. A female child was a year older than him and she was significantly lower down the list. I squared my shoulders.

“Kijou?” said Osamu, more curious than cautious, but still both.

“Everyone below the fifty-fourth ranking... they’re to be removed from the competition,” I announced. “I will arrange that. Don’t bother yourself with it.”

Osamu nodded, but I doubted he planned to bother himself. He was a carefree man. No, I would be in charge of authorising their removals, as per tradition.

“Is there anything else you require me for?” I asked.

“Not on the business side of things,” he replied.

“Then that is everything,” I said. “You may leave.”

I returned my focus to the stack of papers and heard Osamu’s footsteps recede. The door then shut.

Despite this Byakuya child’s early success, it is too early to determine a winner. That is why there are to be other tasks, each one whittling away more competitors until finally only one person remains. As far as I am aware, the youngest never won. It was always someone older.

Anyone could be trained to play stocks. The next tasks will leave only genuine candidates.

* * *

...

For this next task, I directed that the competitors should earn money using an industry that the conglomerate doesn’t already focus on. I excluded them from various enterprises such as mining, nonferrous metals, petrochemicals, aerospace and using the stock market, to give a few examples. The conglomerate comprises of many more than those, for it branches into most sectors, but I permitted competitors to involve themselves in industries the conglomerate doesn’t concentrate on.

Of course, I couldn’t allow the task to be too simple. Everyone began with the same amount of funding. I would be judging them not just on their profits, but also their business image, connections and potential... among other things. Again, those are just a handful of examples. 

On this day, I was in an office in America. Everyone had been ordered not to bother me while I worked. It didn’t matter how important they deemed something to be - I would not be available for any meetings or queries. 

I started before dawn the day after the last task’s deadline. The sky was a gradient between pale blue and faded orange as I booted up my computer. Sitting in a silent room, I sifted through my emails, stuffed with attachments, and spreadsheets soon dominated all my monitors.

Some names stood out to me from previous tasks. Only the ones who ranked highly, of course. Anyone who performed below my expectations were already dead to me. Ultimately, I came across a certain name. Byakuya Polanski. I rearranged the windows on my monitors so that his efforts filled every screen. 

He opted for the pharmaceutical industry, which included medical devices. A quick glance informed me that Polanski Pharma Co Limited had made massive profits. Not as much as certain other competitors, but so far, enough to put him in the top ten.

Even so, I wasn’t judging them solely on their profits, though that would certainly have a significant influence on how I ranked them overall. 

The logo consisted of a ten point star with ‘Polanski’ written next to it, sleek and professional. According to his head butler, who had been authorised to write up in detail about Byakuya’s venture, employees exhibited high satisfaction in all areas, which other than limiting turnover and ensuring greater work performance meant nothing to me. If a worker did excellent work and they were miserable, that wasn’t of my concern. His report incorporated graphs and questionnaire responses with contact details should I wish for them to confirm the information shown to me. 

I cupped my chin as I perused. As stated in the butler’s report, Byakuya played a large role in designing and developing the technology, which included robotic limbs and implants, and he also heavily involved himself in the medicine side of things. The technological aspect was more groundbreaking, using scientific knowledge that an ordinary person could only imagine, yet this was a child on the verge of becoming a teenager. 

This went beyond being a businessman. This was being an inventor. A genius. I noted that the technology wasn’t ridiculously expensive to produce, even quite cheap compared to the rest of the industry without having a detrimental effect on the quality. After I read the tests done on his products and the results of said tests, I delved into the breakdowns of his costs and found a startling beginner’s error.

He undersold his products. Other companies offering the equivalent sold them at a far greater price, and theirs were inferior to what he had available. Had he increased his prices, he would have made a far greater profit. Yes, he had many customers right now, and the female child in a photo was smiling at the camera as she showed off her new arm, but Byakuya could have easily increased the prices by a vast amount and still had customers.

Did he intend to appeal to a lower class of people, even though they had less money?

That loss of profit could have cost him the competition. I had half a mind to score him poorly so he would be eliminated, but he performed adequately regardless. I decided to rank him nineth, and by evening, he had dropped to twelfth.

By night time, I finished my initial readover, and I pressed a button.

“Luwak coffee now,” I said.

My personal assistant brought some through within the next ten minutes. She bowed then left, only speaking to address me once, and I remained deep in thought. 

This will take some time.

* * *

...

I decided on my final rankings for the previous task. Thirty people remained in the competition at that stage, including Byakuya Polanski.

Only when a victor emerged did that person receive the coveted Togami name. The same happened to me - I had always been Kijou, but I wasn’t Kijou Togami until I proved myself in the final round. My superior genetics and elite upbringing ensured my victory. There, I showed that only I was worthy and no one who battled against me deserved to be a Togami. Not while I existed.

The next round had a much tighter budget. I relocated them all to different countries and tasked them all with creating a home business, forbidding them from partnering up with any companies already affiliated with the conglomerate and I made them use aliases. 

They could only work with local businesses and six months after I set this task, I had thick folders physically in my office, one for each remaining competitor. 

Halfway through my evaluations, I came across Byakuya’s folder. He started an automobile business, repairing, taking in used cars and reselling them or reusing the parts. In addition to that, he trained not just employees but customers too, as well as gave out advice.

“He’s a bright one, isn’t he?” said Osamu, slouched forward and resting an arm on a corner of my desk. Other than the occasional comment, he had mostly been quiet for once. “Did you know that he can pilot a helicopter?”

I elevated my gaze.

“You know him well, Sugawara?” I said.

Osamu tilted his head a little.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on several of your bastard children,” said Osamu, which didn’t surprise me. He smirked. “He’s the cutest of the bunch.”

A lot of my senior employees did the same. I could remember some visiting me in my teenage years and for some time after. Activity picked up as the competition drew closer. For me, the competition officially began when I was in my late twenties. Soon after I became the sole heir, I supplied sperm to private clinics as had been tradition. 

Anyway, the reason these visits took place was so business associates could try to suck up to someone likely to become the future head... but the youngest never won. No teenager had ever won. The oldest competitor in this competition had been a male called Masanori, who had fared poorly in the second challenge and was struck off then. He had been in his forties during this competition, and those like him stood a better chance of winning than a child.

So I didn’t understand why Osamu acquainted himself with someone who had no hope of winning.

I didn’t like not understanding things. Osamu’s lips still curved.

“Sugawara, what made you seek him out? There were more than one hundred competitors older than him,” I told him.

“Just a hunch,” said Osamu. He shifted a bit, still with that slit of a smile on his face. 

My interest extended no further. Osamu was a valuable colleague, so I didn’t wish to start unnecessary strife or bother him with more questions. That would be inconvenient for me. I continued to sift through Byakuya’s folder. His young age would have put him at a disadvantage as few people would take a twelve year old boy seriously, especially as he didn’t have his family names to fall back on, but apparently he had been accompanied by his head butler. 

Clients must have assumed that the old man with him was the one they were dealing with, not the child, and I said as such. Osamu shrugged a shoulder.

“Probably. But by having a handsome young boy with him, they probably thought Pennyworth was his grandfather or something. A combination like that will appeal to many customers,” Osamu explained.

I read on, and then I quietly considered what I had read. Osamu didn’t rush me for an answer, watching the process on my face.

“Overall, he has done adequately,” I announced. “Byakuya made some interesting decisions. He offers free consultations, giving advice on reasonable prices so that customers can see if they’re being overcharged at other places. This will make customers go to him, as his prices seem cheaper and fairer, but by doing that, he is limiting his profits. Something similar happened in the previous trial. He’s offering free healthcare and childcare to the employees... an unnecessary undertaking.”

Osamu didn’t say anything. I read some more, regardless of the onset of a headache, and then glanced up. For some reason, or more likely, for no reason, Osamu was still there. In my personal space. And he had been for the past several hours, all the while contributing very little. My lips pursed.

“You don’t have to be here,” I said, restraining a sneer, and Osamu straightened up casually.

The reason I fought my annoyance down wasn’t so I didn’t offend him. I simply didn’t want to betray any emotion. If I showed a sign of weakness, then anyone could chisel away at the chink in my defences that it made.

“Until next time, my dear friend,” Osamu said, and he strode away, raising a hand briefly as he headed to the door.

But he didn’t leave when he got there. He paused, then looked at me over his shoulder.

“I heard about what happened to Masanori-kun. A plane crash... I suppose there was no getting around the pilot’s death,” he remarked in a light tone.

I didn’t reply. Osamu finally left, and I finally had some peace.

Now I could concentrate fully, and I finished going through the rest of the folders. Afterwards, I massaged my temples and heaved a sigh.

It will be a few days before I came to a final decision, I expect.

* * *

...

While I was seated at a desk in one of my many offices, going over my list of the fifteen competitors set to participate in the final task, I was disturbed by the sound of my phone ringing. I picked it up off my desk and checked the caller ID. Unknown. Only a few people knew my personal number, but the caller may have retrieved it by other means, such as by finding it in someone else’s phone directory or by misdialing it. 

As I had important business to attend to, and because I had no desire to know who it was, I hung up. Even if it was someone I knew like my doctor, I would have declined the call. After much solitary deliberation, I had painstakingly narrowed down thirty competitors to fifteen based on their performances in previous tasks and information provided by a large number of trusted and verified sources. The reason why I had needed two weeks to go over the data again and again and so on was because one of these fifteen would take over for me once I retired. A single mistake could doom everything.

I read over the names, even though I could recite them off by heart at this point. One of them was Byakuya Polanski. If I’m honest, I didn’t expect him to win but he had done well in every task, despite his age and the mediocrity of the maternal side of his family. Though I had my doubts, if he wasn’t suited to being the new head of the conglomerate then he would lose and the individual who was the most qualified would become it. His presence wouldn’t matter.

Every challenge helped sculpt my views on each person, bit by bit, and I feel confident in every choice.

Still... I eyed Byakuya’s name.

My phone rang again.

The same number as before.

Not only that, but I had been sent text message saying, ‘I would pick up if I was you.’

I could have blocked the number, or rejected the call again. However, I was curious though mostly annoyed, so I clicked to accept the call.

“Who is this? How did you get my number?” I demanded in a professional tone, so curt and sharp.

Laughter, lazy and young, crackled disrespectfully. My face grew hot.

“As your heir apparent, I of course have your direct number,” said the person.

“What is your name?” I asked, gritting my teeth.

“Ah, I don’t have a name. I’m Nameless. See, when I was very young, a murderer came to my town and slaughtered everyone except me because he missed my hiding place, and he burnt everything to the ground. Therefore I am Nameless now.”

Any retort that I had prepared disintegrated in my mouth, and my mind didn’t prepare any others. I was silent and I could barely breathe.

The person was not put off by my silence. They carried on talking in a bright voice.

“You’re silent. You must remember. This town... was a mining town. It had access to very valuable minerals. The conglomerate wished to acquire some, but no matter how much money you offered them, they declined. The less people who knew, the better, so you hired a hitman and he killed everyone. Almost everyone. Suzuhiko... do you remember him?”

Of course. He was in the final fifteen.

“Suzuhiko did it, and you covered it up. It has been a cold case ever since. Did you know my father delivered the post and my mother would always get real mad if we trekked in mud? She would spank me when I did, and I would keep doing it just to elicit a response from her. His sister found me, and she convinced him to let me live and they adopted me. Now... what do I want? It’s simple. As I’m Nameless, I wasn’t entered in this little game, so I think it’s only fair I’m entered now.”

I croaked, “You’re not a Togami.”

“But what am I if not that? I’m nobody now, because of you.”

They couldn’t see my hands tremble.

“I’ve already chosen fifteen,” I said. “It has to be fifteen competitors. That’s tradition.”

“I can be whoever you want me to be. If you won’t listen to me, I’m sure the press will. I’d like to see you quash that, father.”

My whole body stiffened and I dragged my gaze to the list of names. All of these had very important and influential families. To take off almost anyone of them would draw too much attention, raise too many questions. Most of them knew each other. Most.

Therefore, I said...

“... you are now Byakuya Polanski.”

“Awesome! Don’t worry, I bet my sister or my brother are still in the competition, so they will give me a lift. We’ll chat real soon. Bye.”

The person hung up.

I put down my phone.

I thought long and hard, for a long time.

I decided I will have to make some adjustments for the final round.

* * *

...

The final round didn’t go as planned, I must admit.

Suzuhiko was supposed to kill this invader. It didn’t matter, as I have since found out, that the traitor was a male child around the same age as Byakuya. If he posed a threat to the integrity of the Togami Conglomerate, he had to be eliminated even if he was a child.

For this final task, I had every remaining competitor kidnapped and taken to an island. The only people that I did not kidnap were Suzuhiko and his two siblings, and I let that be known. This created some tension and animosity, as desired. 

Then they were all given a simple task. On the island, I had set up a scavenger hunt filled with challenges. A few of them referred to it as a game. Whoever completed it first would prove themselves to be the rightful heir. They were allowed to work together but only the individual who keyed in a password revealed when the tasks were all completed would become the heir, so it would be unwise to trust or depend on anyone else. It wasn’t a password that one could guess - it was a string of numbers and letters that had no connection to any of the others.

But one competitor had a secret, second objective. Suzuhiko was to murder the invader. The parasite. 

Everything went as I anticipated for the first few weeks. Sometimes several of them grouped together to solve certain puzzles while others remained lone wolves. They slept little, smoked during intervals and nosed around the premises. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I expected Suzuhiko to murder the invader but I didn’t, however, expect everyone to start killing each other before Suzuhiko had the chance to complete his mission.

The invader died. Suzuhiko died. By the end, there were fourteen corpses and a body that was young and almost dead. They stabbed, bludgeoned, crushed and set each other on fire. Other than the female, there was a detective and his assistant who both appeared as the killings commenced. I arrived at the end, having seen it all play out on whatever cameras they didn’t break during the bloodshed, but I had someone explain it to me in detail over a game of chess.

We sat in my private plane, opposite each other with a chessboard resting on a table between us. By ‘we’, I mean me and Byakuya. He is tall, but he has a young face so I can see how he succeeded in disguising himself as the female assistant of a detective. His alias was Polaris Polanski. The surname was his own, while the forename was the name of a star but also based on ‘Pola’, the name of his mother’s mother. This disguise fooled everyone not colluding with him, and the long hair he had before he cut it off had helped.

Byakuya must take after his mother, because his hair is blond and his eyes are blue, unlike mine. I will meet her when we register our marriage. 

After all, her son had won.

“My butler only killed one of them. Shinobu wasn’t in a state to tell me his name, but with some digging around, I found out he was her adopted brother, Kazuo,” said Byakuya, and he moved his bishop to H6.

I used one of my bishops to take the bishop he relocated.

“It’s no more than a corpse now,” I stated, referring to the invader.

Byakuya examined the board with a furrowed brow, then he dragged his queen diagonally across most of it to take my bishop. His queen couldn’t be immediately displaced, and I stared at the board as I weighed my options.

Earlier, Byakuya had told me how he, his butler and the detective got here. He hired the detective, found out where one of the competitors lived and stalked them. Then, when the competitor was being kidnapped, Byakuya’s butler made a distraction nearby so Byakuya and the detective could plant a tracker discreetly onto the transporter.

We used more than one transporter for each individual and Byakuya’s group had to follow with a delay, so they missed the private plane that took the competitor to the island. They reached the island weeks after the task properly began. While this may seem late, only a couple of people knew about the location. To find out about it at all required more than a detective with a high ranking.

Not only that, but Byakuya solved the island’s puzzles within days.

And that is why I chose Byakuya to be my successor. I moved my rook forward and leaned back in my chair. 

“You’re the youngest that has ever won, but don’t take it as a compliment. Just because you are a child, that doesn’t mean I will show you any leniency or kindness,” I warned him.

Byakuya moved his rook to an adjacent square, but while mine had stepped toward him, his shifted once to the side, claiming none of my pieces. He looked up, stony-faced.

“I wouldn’t want you to,” he said, and I hitched my other rook across the board.

The game continued in silence for a while. It progressed slowly but neither of us were bored or distracted. We took our time contemplating our moves and studying our opponent. When Byakuya snuck to the island, he thought to bring a change of clothes, so he no longer wore a pinafore dress but a crisp suit. As he pondered his next move, I regarded him coolly, and when his eyes met mine, though his pair differed in colour to mine, I found them not so different otherwise.

“What will happen to Shinobu?” he asked, reminding me that he was a child.

“She will be expelled like the others,” I said with my arms folded over my chest. “That one is unfit to have the Togami name.”

He didn’t answer right away. In the meantime, I moved my queen forward. Some thought absorbed him, and as his eyes drilled into space, I could tell that he was not as focused on the game of chess as he should have been.

“The others seem to be falling into unfortunate accidents,” said Byakuya, and his gaze flitted to my face. He tipped his head slightly to one side. Though his features were smooth and blank, it was not due to a lack of thought. They were deliberately so.

I didn’t correct him. For them, it was a curse. A curse that came as a result of falling from greatness to the worst possible fate - becoming part of the 99%. But for me, it was a burden, though a necessary one.

Byakuya blinked. After he did, a shadow seemed to fall over his face.

“I will have her be my secretary,” said Byakuya, and I scoffed.

“Are you soft in the head? Or worse... the heart?” I asked him, and I jerked a hand through the air. “She would steal your place in a heartbeat. You would have to sleep with your eyes open from now on if you did that.”

He didn’t falter.

“I can’t be killed,” said Byakuya simply, and he finally moved one of his pieces. “Don’t mistake it for me being emotional. I have no interest in making friends with her, or anyone. I only trust my butler, as he is employed to be trusted. I won because I am intelligent and unaffected by feelings and bonds and other nonsense. If I couldn’t survive by myself, or cracked under pressure, I wouldn’t be here.”

Byakuya sat back.

“You have not seen my full potential yet, Father,” he added. “I will show you I am worth more than a talking cow.”

That was what I told him. I told him that I had been bribed, and that was why the invader usurped Byakuya’s place.

“You are to address me as Togami-sama,” I said, and I took his silence as acknowledgement.

We continued in near silence, gradually losing more and more pieces. Soon I had a king, queen and pawn left, and he had his king, queen and three pawns left. As I waited for him to make his next move, a thought gnawed at me until I could barely tolerate it and I curled my lips.

“I’ve been wondering about something for some time,” I said, peering at him. “Tell me... I noticed that in your tasks, you undercharged your customers and had unnecessary expenses. Why?”

Byakuya nudged up his glasses.

“You mean the free healthcare? I was making a profit, and I am already very rich. I can easily afford it,” he said.

“But why?” I pressed.

“Why not? It’s barely a dent in my pocket and yet for some people, it’s life-changing. If they’re doing business with me or providing labour, then why not? I’m not a person who takes pleasure in the misfortune of others, and they can’t help it if they’re not as brilliant as I am. Besides, I don’t need the world’s wealth to know that I’m a genius and better than everyone else, Togami-sama.”

He was a strange child. While he didn’t trust others and severed all emotional ties with everyone else, he seemed to have no qualms about providing support for them... to an extent. We would have to work on that, but for now, we continued to play.

The game seemed to be approaching a stalemate. 

But then,

“Checkmate,” said Byakuya, thirteen years old, and I knew that for better or for worse, he would take the conglomerate where it had never gone before.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Father.”

On hearing that voice, Byakuya looks up and swivels his chair around. In the doorway of his home office stands his son, around eleven years old, with pale grey eyes and purple hair, but he has his father’s nose and his father’s frown.

“Yes?” says Byakuya.

His son, Aloysius, raises the book in his hands.

“I was wondering if there are more diary entries other than these?” he says.

Byakuya’s eyes flicker, and his lips pinch together.

“Those were the only parts I could salvage. The place was almost entirely destroyed,” says Byakuya. 

He still remembers the ruins and how the pages were singed as he cradled the book in his hands. His father’s former mansion still smelled like death when he entered, and Makoto voice’s calling to him had sounded like the wind outside. 

_ ‘Shut up. I’m busy. Go bother Kirigiri for another ten minutes.’ _

_ ‘Togami-kun...’ _

_ ‘I said leave me alone. You’re more annoying than usual.’ _

_ ‘All right, Togami-kun. We’ll be waiting for you outside. Come out when you’re ready.’ _

“Then can you tell me what happens next?” asks Aloysius, breaking through the walls that had started to set around Byakuya. 

Memories from so many years ago partially resurface, and they run down imaginary walls like crayon melting on a radiator. The scene crumbles away as he returns to the present. Byakuya fixes his eyes on Aloysius. He’s the same age that Byakuya had been when the competition started. 

Those don’t exist anymore. In fact, the conglomerate doesn’t even exist, but Byakuya has something more valuable. A family that loves him and a family he loves back, as hard as it is to voice at times.

Byakuya stands up. His chair creaks.

“Let’s go to the living room,” he says. “And get your mother... she’s in the bedroom.”

Aloysius’s face lights up and he darts out of the room. Byakuya stares out of his window at a blue sky. His parents married for formalities, but him... he married a person full of love, someone brilliant and loyal, and importantly, someone he chose for himself and who chose him, even when the Togami name didn’t mean anything to the rest of the world anymore. 

He turns away and leaves the room, shutting the door behind himself.

In the living room, Aloysius tugs his mother’s arm, and as Touko sits down on the couch, looking around in confusion, Byakuya recalls his father’s last entry and decides this is definitely for the better.

**Author's Note:**

> BASED on togami's novel but i made it better


End file.
